1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a medical system of the type having a number of data processors which are allocated to medical organization units of a similar or varied nature.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Medical facilities such as hospitals or clinics contain different organizational units, such as nursing stations, anesthesia stations, operating rooms, etc., which cooperate in the treatment and care of patients.
German OS 41 32 951 A1 describes a medical facility with a data processor in the form of a central computer and portable terminals which are or can be connected to each other for data exchange. A library of all the patient care measures for the medical facility is stored in the central computer. The portable terminals are provided for the nursing personnel. The terminals can be connected to a data network and can be connected to the central computer via the data network. In this way, the nursing personnel can retrieve instructions for care at the bed of a patient, for example, and can store the measures taken directly on the central computer, thereby reducing the sources of error due to subsequent incomplete or incorrect records.
In the course of a patient""s stay in the medical facility, the patient proceeds through all or only a part of the organizational units of the medical facility, depending on the patient""s reason for the visit. For example, a patient who needs to undergo a surgical intervention passes through:
a) a nursing station at which the patient is received and at which the patient remains until after the surgical intervention convalescence,
b) a patient transport unit which is responsible for conveying the patient between individual organizational units of the clinic,
c) different stations for preparatory examinations for the operation, e.g. the radiological station,
d) an anesthesia station, at which the patient is prepared for the operation and is anesthetized, and
e) an operating room in which the patient undergoes the surgical intervention. To guarantee an effective passage of patients through the individual organizational units, i.e. to ensure the economic efficiency of the medical facility as well, time schedules for the passage of the patient are created which give the planned arrival time and the length of stay of the patient in each organizational unit. The time schedules form the organizational basis of the individual organizational units, e.g. in reference to the use of personnel.
The current practice of creating time schedules has proven to be disadvantageous, however, given the passage of a number of patients through a number of organizational units in one day because if the planned passage of one patient through an organizational unit of the medical system is delayed, the sequence of other organizational units which need to accept the patient or to transfer a different patient to the blocked organizational unit is also delayed. Since the flow of information between the organizational units is frequently insufficient, the organizational units may not be able to promptly adjust to the successive delays in the planned time sequences and as a result the personnel of the organizational units my not be utilized effectively, necessitating the postponement or even cancellation of actual planned events, such as a patient""s operation, despite preparatory measures for the operation having already been carried out at the patient.
Given these types of time delays, the planned time sequences of individual organizational units can become so confused that the effectiveness of the organizational units suffers, which can be associated with economic disadvantages for the medical facility.
It is thus an object of the present invention to provide a medical system of the type described above wherein the economic efficiency of a medical facility formed of organizational units is increased.
This object is inventively achieved in a medical system with a number of data processors which are allocated to organizational units of the same type and/or of different types, the data processors of which are connected to each other for data exchange, the medical system operating such that the data relating to the medical system concerning time sequences for the flow of material and/or persons between the organizational units can be entered to one or more individual data processors of the medical system, or to all the data processors of the medical system, and can be retrieved directly by the data processors of the medical system. This guarantees that each organizational unit can virtually immediately report delays as may arise in planned time sequences in the passage of patients or material to the operational units which directly cooperate with the organizational unit once the occurrence of a delay is certain. To this end, the medical system is operated to allow the input of a time delay to all or to only individual data processors of the medical system which are allocated to organizational units that are particularly susceptible to delays, such as operating rooms, as warranted, and this input of delay can be immediately retrieved by every data processor. Thus, current information about the time sequences of the medical system is always available to the individual organizational units of the medical system, so that the organizational units can adapt their internal sequence accordingly. In this way, the loss of time due to unnecessary waiting and the associated tie-up of personnel of an organizational unit and the premature undertaking of preparatory measures can be avoided, so that the economic efficiency of medical facilities formed of these types of cooperating organizational units can be increased.
In an embodiment of the invention the medical system has a control computer which overrides the data processors and which processes the data entered at the individual data processors and makes this data available to all the data processors. The control computer can be a central computer of the medical system, but it is also possible for one of the data processors of the organizational units to constitute the overriding control computer for the medical system. In this variation, an additional overriding control computer could be forgone.
According to a preferred embodiment of the invention, the control computer interrogates individual or all data processors of the organizational units as to whether the predetermined time sequences can be maintained; it processes any delay times for the flow of material and/or personnel, these times having been entered, as warranted, at individual data processors of the medical system; it updates the time sequences; and it makes the updated time sequences immediately available to the data processors of the medical system. Thus, it is not left up to the personnel of an organizational unit to think of corresponding delay reports and messages to other organizational units. Rather, for updating the time sequences, the control computer of the medical system advantageously requests the data from the organizational units itself.
In another variant of the invention the control computer interrogates the data processors of the organizational units as to the maintenance of the time sequences in cycles. In this way, the time sequences for the flow of material and/or persons is checked at defined intervals, so it can be assumed that in the corresponding cycle time, the retrievable data of the medical system are always current.
According to a further variant of the invention, prior to the chronological arrival of a planned event of an organizational unit, the control computer transmits a control message to the data processor of that organizational unit, which prompts that data processor to deliver an optical and/or acoustical signal as an indication of the arrival time of the event. Thus, the organizational units are notified in advance of the impending occurrence (arrival) of an event, so that a preparatory action which should be carried out is not forgotten through oversight. This presents another possibility to notify the control computer if a time delay exists.
According to another embodiment of the invention, the medical facility is a surgical facility in which the organizational units include operating rooms and/or nursing stations and/or anesthesia stations and/or patient transport units and/or material management units of medical material.